Doomsday utterances and reports by scientific and scholastic heavyweights affirm that this mother earth cannot subsist much longer. The planet’s “reboot” would be unnecessary if mankind were able to resolve all the problems facing mankind and this mother earth. This is much in line with what many Christians foresee as the second coming of Christ, when He returns to earth and fully establishes His kingdom here.

Stephen Hawking

In March 2018, two weeks before his death, Stephen Hawking and a co-author finalized an article predicting that the universe would end by fading into darkness when the stars run out of energy. The article entitled “A Smooth Exit from Eternal Inflation” was submitted to a leading scientific journal for peer review:

In 2016, Hawking, with his bulging computer brain, gave humanity an intimidating deadline for finding a new planet to call home: 1,000 years.

Now Hawking, the renowned theoretical physicist turned apocalypse warning system, was back with a revised deadline. In “Expedition New Earth”—a documentary debuted in 2017 as part of the BBC’s “Tomorrow’s World” science season—Hawking claimed that Mother Earth would greatly appreciate it if we could gather our belongings and get out—not in 1,000 years, but in the next century or so!

More specifically, in May 2017, the Chicago Tribune reported Hawking as saying that humanity had only about 100 years to escape earth.

Due to climate change, overdue asteroid strikes, epidemics, and population growth, Hawking believes our planet is increasingly precarious. He has been explicit about humanity’s need to find a “Planet B.” In 2008, according to an article in New Scientist, Hawking claimed that remaining on Earth places humanity at great risk of encountering another mass extinction.

Sir Martin Rees and Others

Hawking is not alone in making dire predictions for our planet. Sir Martin Rees, 59th President of the Royal Society (effectively Britain’s top scientist), a Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Astronomer Royal since 1995, published a book in 2003 titled: Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind's Future in This Century—On Earth and Beyond.

In this book, he discusses a range of existential risks confronting humanity and controversially estimates that humanity has a mere 50/50 chance of surviving beyond the year 2100 C.E. Sir Martin Rees is so concerned with these terrible prospects for Mother Earth, that he has co-founded an apocalypse think tank called Center for the Study of Existential Risk.

Likewise, Frank Fenner, the eminent Australian scientist who helped wipe out smallpox, predicts humans (and many other creatures) “will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years,” because of the massive scale of human impact on the earth (overpopulation, environmental destruction, and climate change). He believes the situation is irreversible, and it is too late for humans to change course.

In February 2018, the British newspaper Daily Mail reported that scientists have found a 6-mile-wide lava dome growing off the coast of Japan. Referring to a study conducted by Kobe University (Japan) researchers, the article stated:

A submerged volcano off the coast of Japan that erupted 7,300 years ago could be preparing to make a comeback. Scientists have discovered evidence of a giant dome of lava in the Kikai volcano’s collapsed magma chamber. Currently the dome is around 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) wide and 1,968 feet (600 meters) tall. Scientists say an eruption could take place without warning, and if it does, it could kill as many as 100 million people and trigger a ’volcanic winter.’

However, the research paper said “such super eruptions are ‘rare but extremely hazardous events.’ ”

Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton was arguably the greatest scientist who ever lived. His book, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, published in 1687, remains a most powerful and influential scientific treatise that has dominated scientists’ views of the physical universe for the last three centuries. In 2005, when a survey of scientists in the U.K.-based Royal Society asked whether Newton or Albert Einstein had the greater effect on the history of science, Newton was deemed the more influential one.

Though he is known for his scientific insights, biblical hermeneutics was Newton’s greatest passion. He devoted more time to the study of Scripture than to science. He stated: “I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.”

In June 2007, the National Museum in Jerusalem publicly displayed some of Newton’s manuscripts related to religion and science. In a manuscript written in 1704, Newton attempted to collect scientific information from the book of Daniel. He concluded that the world would end no earlier than 2060. In predicting this, he stated:

This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail.

That was not the only time when Newton criticized people who had given prophecy a bad name by trying to predict the future. In Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John, published in 1733 after his death, Newton wrote:

The folly of Interpreters has been, to foretell[sic] times and things by this Prophecy [the book of Revelation], as if God designed to make them Prophets. ...The design of God was much otherwise. He gave this and the Prophecies of the Old Testament, not to gratify men’s curiosities by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they were fulfilled, they might be interpreted by the event, and his own Providence, not the Interpreters[’s], be then manifested thereby to the world.

Elsewhere, Newton interpreted biblical prophecies to mean that the Jews would return to the Holy Land before the world ends. One of the curators of the manuscript exhibit in 2007 reportedly said that this area of Newton’s writings “complicate[s] the idea that science is diametrically opposed to religion.” These writings “show a scientist guided by religious fervor, by a desire to see God’s actions in the world.”

Failed Doomsday Prophecies

Throughout the ages, men have made failed doomsday prophecies such as the Great Fire of London of 1666, the Mormon Armageddon of 1891 (or earlier), the Halley’s Comet panic of 1910, Michael Nostradamus’s prediction regarding August 1999, the Y2K computer bug of January 1, 2000, the Mayan Apocalypse of 2012, etc. People all over the world are eager to believe in the predictions of Nostradamus and the Mayas while dismissing the Bible’s predictions.

Faced with so many failures of non-biblical doomsday prophecies, it is reasonable to question whether the Bible’s end-time prophecies are any more reliable. In view of today’s global geopolitical dynamics in the United States, Russia, North Korea, Britain, Europe, the Middle East, and China, this principal author, in part of his book is examining specific but broad-based Bible prophecies.

One should note that each previous predictive failure hinged on one specific artifact, one specific quote, or one specific threat that pointed to a predicted doomsday. In contrast, the Bible contains a broad spectrum of specific prophecies that can be examined on their own respective merits, creating multiple possible points of failure to destroy the Bible’s credibility. The Bible is a “God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16) consistent whole. The more individual prophecies are found to be credible/accurate, the more likely the others are to be credible/accurate as well.

God’s prophecies are intended to increase men’s faith. That is consistent with Jesus’ words in John 13:19 (NASB): “From now on I am telling you before it comes to pass, so that when it does occur, you may believe that I am He.”

Dr. David Liang, former head of Space Systems and Technology within Canada’s Department of National Defence (DND), was responsible for all space related research and development activities within the DND. Taking early retirement in February 2003, Dr. Liang travels internationally speaking on Biblical prophecy and apologetics. He has written four books in Chinese. This article is extracted from his first English-language book: Christ’s Return and Today’s Global Geopolitical Bombshells.

Dorothy Liang served as a lawyer and officer in the Canadian Armed Forces, including a brief deployment to Afghanistan. She subsequently felt called to serve in Christian missions and hopes to join a church-planting team in France through the sending organization World Team.